Halloween // Happy Walpurgisnacht!

Today, April 30, is the eve of St. Walburga’s Day. It’s also, as u/MagiRiver writes here, Zodiac opposition to Halloween.

According to German folklore, tonight—also known as Hexxenacht—is when witches gather “from across the land for a great sabbat on the top of Blocksberg (now Brocken), a summit in the Harz Mountains.”

As author Bram Stoker put it in his cut opening chapter of Dracula:

Walpurgis Night was when, according to the belief of millions of people, the devil was abroad—when the graves were opened and the dead came forth and walked. When all evil things of earth and air and water held revel.

In Sweden, where the night and day are Valborgsmässoafton, children used to go trick-or-treating.

According to historian Owen Davies:

The association of witchcraft with May Eve [has] to do with venerable rituals for protecting livestock at a time in the agricultural calendar when animals were traditionally moved to summer pastures. Bonfires were lit by communities across Europe to scare aware predators. In sixteenth-century Ireland, hares were killed on May Day, in the belief that they were shape-shifting witches bent on sucking cows dry and stealing butter. In Scotland, pieces of Rowan tree were placed above the doors of cow byres to keep witches away.

In Ireland and Scotland, May 1 and the days around it are called Beltane, the great Gaelic seasonal festival on the opposite side of the year from Samhain, carried on by Neopagans.

On Beltane, historian Ronald Hutton records, the people in “the hinterland of Aberdeen” believed

that on that evening and night the witches were abroad in all their force, casting ill on cattle and stealing cows’ milk. To counteract their evil power … fires were kindled by every farmer and cottar. Old thatch, or straw, or furze, or broom was piled into a heap and set on fire a little after sunset. Some of the present kept constantly tossing up the blazing mass […] while the younger portion, that assisted, danced round the fire or ran through the smoke, shouting ‘Fire! blaze and burn the witches; fire!, fire! burn the witches!’

With all that, I think it’s far to call Walpurgisnacht/Beltane/May Day “the other Halloween,” as this site does. And, as with Halloween, watch out for any spirits and witches’ sabbats tonight…

From ghoulies and ghosties
And long-legged beasties,
And things that go bump in the night,
Good Lord, deliver us!